Call of Duty is one series that often sparks a pretty substantial amount of debate. While the game brings in millions upon millions of dollars with every entry, it often doesn’t do so without much criticism. Each game’s campaign and story is often a topic of criticism. This time around, however, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and its developers hope to change that.

In a recent, fairly extensive interview with Eurogamer, Brett Robins, Sledgehammer Games Creative Director, decided to share some words regarding Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and his goals for its story:

“One of our goals when we worked on Dead Space was constant immersion – don’t ever have them snapped out of the world in any way. We have that in Advanced Warfare, where you’re getting rid of elements that are distracting, as much as possible. Some of our levels are longer than you might expect in a normal Call of Duty level, and we want to keep you in a certain emotional space for a long time. If an emotional event happens, we try to really play it out, and not jump to another emotional space.”

The emotional arc in a Call of Duty game typically seems to be a steep one punctuated by ever louder explosions, mimicking the cinema of Michael Bay, though Advanced Warfare is trying for something else.

“Well, I prefer James Cameron over Michael Bay myself,” says Robins. “I think we made a couple of decisions that help – and I agree, it’s a high adrenaline, high action experience, and when you’re in that frame of mind it’s easy to lose the story. The story follows a single character throughout every level. That offered us a certain amount of clarity in the narrative. You’re not having to constantly remind yourself or ask yourself who am I, and why am I here? In any given level, if the player paused the game and just stopped, they could answer the question why am I here? And why do I care? As long as they’ve always got that in my mind. It’s something I’d always remind myself of when developing the story, and developing the levels.”

This is an incredibly exciting thing to hear. Fans have been assured over time that Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare would be different than past entries in the series, but this is one of the more oddly specific differences we have heard about in the upcoming installment.

And indeed, it is a very welcome change to the Call of Duty experience. It is no secret that Call of Duty‘s stories are a bit underwhelming, marred by a constant barrage of attempts to wow the audience with high-ante events that ultimately just feel forced. But if fans know that Sledgehammer is looking to bring some of the immersive and centralized style of Deadspace to this new title, then we can be assured that Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare will feature one of the best stories the franchise has had in years.